There has been a lot of coverage of the Boston Red Sox inviting Bill Buckner to throw out the first pitch at their home opener. Buckner was reviled in Boston for more than a decade to the point that he and his family had to move out of the area. When the fans welcomed him to Fenway Park and he threw a strike in the ceremonial first pitch, many have said this brings him closure. If that is what it took, good for him and good for the fans of the Red Sox.
Juxtaposed with that feelgood story, Moises Alou now says – about five years after the fact – that he would not have been able to catch the ball that Steve Bartman interfered with in Chicago. That is certainly not what his body language and anger said at the moment of the play, but revisionist history seems to be one of the major pastimes for athletes, celebrities and politicians these days. Maybe Alou is trying to give Bartman closure? Who knows? Here is the issue that Cubs’ fans need to wrestle with:
For the home opener in 2009, who should throw out the first pitch: Steve Bartman or Moises Alou dressed in a billy-goat costume?
The escalating salaries in sports seem to have made me numb to some of the press releases associated with signings. However, now that the baseball season has begun, two contracts seem to stand out and ask the question, “Can that be right?”
The White Sox will pay Octavio Dotel $11M this year. Excuse me, but a few years ago, I suggested that he should be called Octavio “Heartbreak” Dotel. Just for clarification, that is not a compliment for a relief pitcher…
The number may be a tad smaller, but the other contract that has to have some folks in Milwaukee shaking their heads would be the $10M that the Brewers will pay Eric Gagne this summer. When I saw a reference to that contract after Gagne blew two saves in his first three appearances this year, the first thing that went through my mind was “Really? Who thought that was a good idea?”
There are a whole lot of players in MLB on the DL for varying periods of time at the moment. If there is a team that came north from Spring Training with no one on the DL, I cannot think of it. The corner of my brain devoted to cynicism/realism wonders actively if this is the aftermath of the steroid era in baseball. Allow me to elaborate…
For years, lots and lots of players were taking steroids to build themselves up and to help them heal from injuries. Now that testing is more prevalent and more meaningful and now that penalties for testing positive can cost several million dollars in lost wages, it is reasonable to assume that fewer players are taking their chances with steroids. So maybe their enhanced strength is too much for their tendons and joints and they do not have access to other steroids to help the repair process along the way. And maybe that is why there are so many players on the DL at the moment. It will be interesting to see if the DL becomes less crowded as younger players who came up in the “non-steroid era” become the majority of players in MLB.
I read a report that Brandon Backe and Albert Pujols got into a verbal tussle before a recent Astros/Cardinals game in Houston. Evidently, Backe did not take kindly to the fact that in the previous game, Pujols really clobbered JR Towles – the Houston catcher. The Backe/Pujols confrontation was purely verbal and after the fact, Backe told the Houston Chronicle:
“It’s apparent that we don’t like each other. That’s OK. There are plenty of other people I don’t like in this game. The competition between he and I just escalated.”
Here is one more thing that is apparent – over and above the fact that Backe thinks that he and Pujols do not like each other:
Backe’s best subject in school was probably not English if that class demanded that he use objective case pronouns properly…
For your term paper assignment in this on-line course in sports reality, answer the following in a minimum of 3000 words and a maximum of 5000 words:
Considering various sports and the people who organize/run them, which of the following sports is the sleaziest and why:
1. Boxing
2. Pro ‘rassling
3. The Olympics
4. NCAA “revenue sports” [men’s basketball and football]
Finally, with regard to baseball’s salary structure, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about the lower end of that spectrum:
“The Marlins’ $17 million payroll for the 25-man active roster is the lowest in baseball by more than double. Put it this way. When ‘Mr. Marlin’ Jeff Conine signed that one-day contract to retire as a Marlin, he briefly became the team’s highest-paid player.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…